


don't delete the kisses

by alivealiveoh



Category: The Old Guard (Comics), The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/F, Fluff, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Pining, and they were roommates (oh my god they were roommates), bold of you to assume i know how to tag any of this, eventual background Booker/Nile
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26382457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alivealiveoh/pseuds/alivealiveoh
Summary: “Don’t look at me like that.”“Oh, my God.”“I’m serious, Joe.”“So am I- oh myGod.”Quỳnh groans, letting her head fall into her hands where she sits at the little kitchen counter. Nile’s voice, brimming with barely contained laughter, pipes up from the couch.“Hey, Q? Just wondering, when were you gonna tell us how hot your roommate is?”(The pure, grade-A unadulterated romcom Andy x Quỳnh roommates AU that no one asked for, but that we all deserve.)
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	don't delete the kisses

**Author's Note:**

> title is from “Don’t Delete the Kisses” by Wolf Alice, which i was listening to this morning when this AU appeared to me like a fever dream. i know we all love some good old-fashioned Andy x Quỳnh angst but i'm gonna level with you, this is all fluff. this is also the first thing i have ever posted on AO3 in my life so i apologize in advance for any and all mistakes, they are all mine.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Oh, my God.”

“I’m serious, Joe.”

“So am I- oh my _God_.”

Quỳnh groans, letting her head fall into her hands where she sits at the little kitchen counter. Nile’s voice, brimming with barely contained laughter, pipes up from the couch.

“Hey, Q? Just wondering, when were you gonna tell us how hot your roommate is?”

“Ideally? Never.” Quỳnh’s voice is muffled by the fabric of her sweater, and she wonders idly how long it would take to suffocate like this. Two minutes, maybe? Three?

“Oh. My. God.” Joe is still staring, wide-eyed, at the closed front door.

“Do we need to reset him to factory settings or something?”

“I’m sorry,” Joe counters, not sounding very sorry at all, “but what else is there to say?”

“Knowing you, at least a hundred other things. All of which she can probably _hear_ , by the way, since apparently no one in this room knows how to use an indoor voice.”

“To be fair,” Nicky says thoughtfully, “she probably already knows how hot she is. No one can look like that and not know.”

Nile nods, emphatically swallowing a mouthful of pizza. “He’s right, there’s no way she doesn’t know. Not with that energy.”

Quỳnh is about to ask what the fuck, exactly, any of that is supposed to mean, but Nile keeps talking. 

“Anyway, the real question is: what are you going to do about it?”

Three sets of eyes turn to look at her expectantly, and Quỳnh finally lifts her head from her arms to stare at them in turn. These are her best friends, she reminds herself. She loves them, and supposedly, they love her. None of them are actually idiots, nor are they even (usually) that annoying, but in this moment she’s having a hard time remembering any of that. She speaks slowly, drawing out her words with such exaggerated patience that Joe rolls his eyes. 

“I am not going to do anything about it, because we barely know each other, and more importantly, because I am not a huge creep.”

“True, you are on the smaller side. If anything, you’d be a petite creep.” 

Quỳnh lobs an apple in Nicky’s direction. “I will actually kill you, di Genova.” He grins at her in response. Nile, meanwhile, continues in earnest.

“You know enough about her to live with her, right? And the odds are that she’s probably not an axe murderer, so I don’t know what else you need.”

“Well,” Joe offers, leaning over to pick an abandoned crust off of Nile’s plate, “she might not be interested in women.”

“No, she’s definitely interested in women.”  
All eyes snap towards Quỳnh once more.

“ _What-_ ”

“How do you-”

“You sound awfully confident about that for a person who ‘doesn’t know her that well’.” 

Quỳnh sighs, and Joe nods encouragingly as if to say, “well?”.

“I know that she’s interested in women, because she spent two and a half hours on the phone last night talking to her girlfriend.”

Nicky’s eyes widen, which is impressive, Quỳnh thinks, given that they’re already twice the size of a normal person’s. 

“Ah.”

“Yep.”

The four of them sit in silence for a few seconds, munching on what’s left of their pizza and processing this new turn of events, before Nile speaks up again. 

“I gotta say, your roommate doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would spend two and a half hours talking about anything.”

“Okay, can we at least use her actual name?”

Joe frowns. “What did she say it was, again?”

“Andy.”

If any of them notice the way Quỳnh sighs a little as she says it, they have the good grace not to mention it. Nicky and Joe exchange a loaded glance, as if they have both recognized something unexpected, and Nicky clears his throat. 

“It fits her. Did she say if it was short for anything?” 

Quỳnh shakes her head, smiling a little as she remembers the way Andy had winced when she asked her the same question. 

“Nope, she was pretty emphatic about that. Just ‘Andy’.”

“A woman of few words,” Joe laughs, “just like my Nicolò.” Nicky beams at him, and Joe winks, and the love between them is a current so palpable that for an instant it is almost visible. They aren’t one of those couples who make it unbearable to be around them together, for which Nile and Quỳnh have actually thanked them more than once, but no one can doubt what they are to each other. It’s something that speaks for itself, and sometimes it’s so loud that Quỳnh’s heart aches to hear it. Sometimes, she wants to cover her ears. 

“Well,” Nile says after a beat, brushing her braids over one shoulder, “it’s like I always say- just because there’s a goalkeeper, doesn’t mean you can’t score.” The other three burst into laughter.

“Our little fratboy,” Nicky deadpans, while Joe gives an exaggerated grimace and Quỳnh raises an eyebrow.

“Sorry, is this the same Nile who once spent a full day listening to ‘Bust Your Windows’ on repeat because the boy you were texting asked someone else out?”

“Oh my God, that was in _middle school_ -”

Joe, Nicky, and Quỳnh break into a three part rendition of Jazmine Sullivan’s “Bust Your Windows”, which is surprisingly in tune for something that sounds more like a group of seals having a turf war than anything resembling the human voice, and Nile does a valiant job of pretending like they aren’t all hilarious. 

“I swear, the way y’all test me sometimes…”

“It’s called love, and you would be lost without it.” Nile’s exasperated expression dissolves into a smile (she is unable to frown at any of them for long), and she rests her head against Joe’s shoulder where they sit together on the couch. 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, fluttering one hand in dismissal. “Anyway, speaking of love-”

“She has a girlfriend, Nile,” Quỳnh answers flatly. She doesn’t mean to sound as sharp as she does, but Nile blinks and pulls back as if she pricked her finger. Nicky and Joe exchange another look. Quỳnh tries to swallow the little knot of guilt at the base of her throat, and offers her most mischievous half-smile in apology. “Besides, it’s bad form to try and seduce someone before they’ve even got their bed frame set up.” 

The guys laugh, trading a few quips about how Andy seems like _exactly_ the kind of person who wouldn’t bother with furniture when a mattress on the floor works perfectly well, but Nile is still looking at Quỳnh. There are upsides to having the same best friend for upwards of a decade, but the near-telepathic ability to tell when you’re bullshitting is not one of them. Her voice is so soft that it almost gets lost in the crossfire of Joe and Nicky’s banter- almost. 

“I have a feeling about this one, Q.” 

_No shit_ , Quỳnh wants to say. _So do I_. But whatever that feeling is, to say it out loud will give it shape and roots and space to grow, and that terrifies Quỳnh in a way she isn’t used to. She is used to being fearless, to laughing and flinging herself off of metaphorical cliffs and trusting that she will grow wings on the way down. Suddenly there is something fragile in her chest, and if she leapt now it wouldn’t survive the fall.

“Quỳnh? What’s this?” 

She doesn’t know how long she’s been zoning out, but it’s clear from the amusement on Joe’s face that this is the second or third time he’s asked that question. He’s standing by the hallway that leads to Andy’s side of the apartment, lightly nudging a tall, slim black bag with his toe. 

“Oh,” she says absentmindedly, “I think that’s where she keeps her foils.”

Joe raises his eyebrows. “Foils? As in-”

“Fencing, yeah. I guess she does it competitively.”

Nicky lets out a low whistle, and Nile’s whole body seems to vibrate with the effort it takes not to cackle as she addresses Quỳnh. 

“So let me get this straight- stop laughing, Joe, you know what I mean- your new roommate is a tall, steely-eyed, raven-haired Amazon who looks like she could snap any of us in half with her pinky finger. And she sword fights in her spare time?” 

“Competitively,” Nicky adds helpfully. 

“ _Competitively_ ,” Nile repeats, staring at Quỳnh expectantly. 

“That’s what it looks like.” 

Joe shakes his head, eyeing the bag of foils with new apprehension. “You,” he declares with the certainty of someone watching a dear friend trip into the same rabbit hole that he fell down years ago, “are so fucked.”

Quỳnh is opening her mouth to argue that she’s _fine,_ actually, and that it’s not like she’s never been around a beautiful woman before, when the deadbolt clicks open and the beautiful woman in question sails back in. 

“Forgot my stuff,” Andy offers by way of explanation, crossing the room in three quick strides to retrieve her bag of fencing gear. A lock of dark hair slips free of its haphazard braid and falls across her eyes, and she bats it away impatiently before turning to shoot an easy smile over her shoulder at Quỳnh. “Back later!”

“Yeah,” Quỳnh cries, in a voice that is both an octave too high and seems to be acting of its own volition, since she certainly can’t remember making the conscious decision to speak. “Same!” 

_Same?_  
“That is, I mean- I’ll be here later, too. Not going anywhere, so.”  
_Jesus Christ._

Andy’s hand pauses on the doorknob, and a flash of confusion darts across her features so swiftly that Quỳnh can barely catch it. She smiles again, another flash of brilliant teeth, laughter lurking in the corners of her mouth. “Lucky me.”

And just like that, she slips back out the door, leaving the shattered remnants of Quỳnh’s chill (and any hint of plausible deniability) in her wake. The room is silent for a minute afterward, as Joe and Nile stare at her with looks that say “what was _that_ ,” and “this is worse than I thought,” respectively. Nicky is pointedly Not Looking, making a show instead of reading something very absorbing on his phone. Quỳnh’s brain, which has been moving in slow-motion for the past ninety seconds, suddenly whirs back into operating speed with only one thought:

“Oh my God,” she groans, dropping her head back onto her arms. “I am  _ so _ fucked.”

And out of the chorus of laughter (Nile), consolation (Nicky), and general expressions of disbelief (Joe) that erupts from her three friends, she notices that none of them take the time to contradict her. 

**Author's Note:**

> i have been on [tumblr](https://eteinvincible.tumblr.com) yelling in the tags about this movie for the past two months, so honestly this was only a matter of time. i don't know yet how many chapters this is going to be, but we're going to try and cram as many tropes into this thing as it'll hold, and that's a promise.


End file.
